Confessions: Spencer Rice peruses the shelves

Now that the mockumentary has become the default mode for low-budget comedy, there are increasingly few tactics that have not been done to death. In the quest for fresh funny, there may be little else to do than try to find new ways to blur the boundary between what’s real and what’s contrived. Then there’s the ongoing challenge of concocting gags so sick, crude and inhumane they’re enough to make Borat wince.

A largely improvised, thoroughly filthy yet surprisingly sweet comedy by Spencer “Spenny” Rice and director Duncan Christie, Confessions of a Porn Addict scores well on both counts. Told in the time-honoured mock-doc fashion (complete with Christie appearing on screen as a manipulative director), this is the story of Mark Tobias, a chronic masturbator who deeply laments how his addiction to smut cost him his marriage to wife Felice (Lindsey Connell).

Matters take a turn toward the skeezily surreal when Mark and his Porn Addicts Anonymous sponsor Bob (Yuk Yuk’s boss Mark Breslin in a hilarious performance) travel to American porn’s geographical epicentre, the San Fernando Valley. There, Mark tangles with Rob Black, the motor-mouthed president of aptly titled video company Extreme Associates. The kind of character that no writer could invent, Black very nearly hijacks the movie with his rants, tantrums and own quest to brave new terrain in the name of adult entertainment. In the process, his presence transforms Rice and Christie’s movie from a run-of-the-mill mock doc into something genuinely edgy and repulsive.